Monthly Archives: March 2015

Congratulations to the DGH Junior Battle of the Books team which placed 1st out of 17 teams and will be continuing onto the board-wide competition on April 8th. One DGH parent told me how impressed she was that the students were able to provide correct answers after only 4 or 5 words of the question being read! You need a spectacular memory in order to do that!

The DGH team consisted of:

Mackenzie M

Faith M

Emily L

Evan A

Thanks to Ms. Schmiegelow for organizing the event AND the team! Overall, the day was a success with 17 schools being represented at the competition. Excellent sportsmanship was shown by all and the day ran smoothly. Having a wide variety of activities for to participate in (from Battle of the Books to sports) is always a great thing!

One of Ms. McColl’s favourite times of the year has begun (not to mention Dr. George Hall’s, as well!). The kick-off assembly for Jump Rope for Heart took place yesterday, March 30th! That means Jump Rope for Heart Fundraising is officially underway!

Why Jump Rope for Heart? This charity raises money for Heart and Stroke research. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised to aid in developments to fight one of Canada’s deadliest diseases. You can check out the Jump Rope for Heart website to learn more about how the charity spends the money that is raised and the achievements that have happened, in part, because of the fundraising raised. We also like this charity and event because it gets our students physically active!

Key information is listed below. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the school.

Important Information

Kindergarten to Grade 5 students

Dance-a-Thon takes place on Friday, May 1st

When 1st Block

Fundraising Due Back Into School by Wednesday, April 29th

Grades 6 to 8 Students

Jump Rope for Heart takes place on Friday, May 1st

When 2nd or 3rd Block

Fundraising Due Back Into School by Friday, April 24th

Note: Grades 6 to 8 students must raise at least $15 in order to participate. The reason for the earlier due date for fundraising is so that activities can be organized according to the number of students participating.

Pledge Forms and Online Fundraising

• if you would like a PLEDGE form, please sign and return the form that Ms. McColl sent home on Monday

• ALLpledge forms that are sent home MUST be returned to the school (even if you ultimately do not collect any pledges)

• if you would like to FUNDRAISE, but want to do it ONLINE, please go to www.jumpropeforheart.ca

Did you know that students in grades 1 to 3 are involved in a “Write To Give” writing project? For the second year in a row, Ms. Kirkpatrick has organized the Write to Give project for students.

What is this about? In the Write to Give project, each class creates its own book. The book has a theme (or message) decided upon by the class. Each student in the class contributes to the book. The book is then printed and bound (it looks exactly like a book that you would purchase from a store). Each student receives their own copy of the book. Each student also has their name (as a contributor to the book) at the front of the book. The book that each class creates is then entered into a competition in which the top books are chosen to be advertised, printed and sold (online and in bookstores!).

Aside from how cool the above is, Write To Give is a wonderful activity because the profits raised by the sale of these books is used to _____________________________. Through the act of creating and writing these books, DGH students are helping others around the world.

DGH school community, there is NOTHING more authentic than this as a writing task! In today’s educational world we are striving more and more to provide academic tasks that are more authentic or “real-life” like. Each student contributing to a book that her/his class creates is pretty much as authentic as you can get!

Special thanks go to Ms. Kirkpatrick who originally learned of this project and got it up and running at DGH last year. She again took the lead in keeping the project going this year. Thanks also go to the other staff involved, who enthusiastically embraced the project. Your enthusiasm has certainly transferred into our students, as well!

Our Junior and Senior Basketball teams are in final preparations for their upcoming Zone Basketball Tournaments. Tournament dates are:

Junior Zone Basketball – Tuesday, April 7th in the p.m. at Mariposa

Senior Girls Zone Basketball – Wednesday, April 8th in the a.m. at DGH

Senior Girls Zone Basketball – Wednesday, April 8th in the p.m. at DGH

Primary County Basketball – Tuesday, April 21st (all day) at Mariposa

Thank you to the students who have committed to these teams and to the school staff who have taken on coaching responsibilities. The commitment to being on any sports team is significant; one of the added dimensions in basketball is the physically grueling nature of the sport. Running at top speed for most of a game is no easy thing (especially in a larger gym like ours!). Only through attendance at practice and accepting the conditioning that comes through this can you prepare yourself for the Zone and County tournaments.

While we know that all of our teams will do well, we will be proud of your accomplishments regardless of placement. The desire to win is always important; sportsmanship and being good ambassadors for Dr. George Hall Public School are even more important.

Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit

Visual dental checks:

● Provide parents with advice on the dental needs of their children
● Provide access to Health Unit dental financial assistance programs
● Help with the development of community dental programsAll students in JK, SK and grade 2 will be provided with a check.
Children who have used the Children In Need of Treatment Program (CINOT) may be checked.
● Parents of students in these grades who do NOT want their child checked must advise the school
in writing.
● Parents of students NOT in one of the designated grades can request a check by contacting the
health unit or sending a request to the school.

Dental checks are conducted by a Registered Dental Hygienist. This check does not replace yourchild’s regular dental visit. You will be advised of your child’s recommended dental needs.

Please contact the Oral Health Department if you have any questions regarding this program.

The warmer weather can only mean one thing – the Easter Bunny is getting ready to begin his trek around the world! With the Easter Bunny’s visit, comes the Easter Holidays. Easter Holidays this year are:

Good Friday – Friday, April 3rd

Easter Monday – Monday, April 6th

Regardless of your family’s traditions, DGH wishes your family an enjoyable holiday that you can hopefully spend with family. One of my family’s traditions is my mother’s fabulous “Easter Bunny” shaped cake (with her always tasty coffee flavoured icing). As you can tell, Easter is an enjoyed holiday in the Parish household! The Easter Bunny cake is an expectation each year!

Thank you to Ms. Schmiegelow who has organized and will host the area level Battle of the Books competition for the “southern” end of the TLDSB. These competitions will be taking place at DGH on Tuesday, March 31st and Wednesday, April 1st. Junior and Intermediate teams from all over the “south” will be coming to DGH to compete.

For those of you who do not know, the Battle of the Books is an AMAZING opportunity for students to get engaged AND competitive in their reading! Participating schools send a Junior and/or Intermediate team. Each school team, which consists of 4 players, has to read all of the books from the list arranged for the competition. Teams need to the know the books inside out because questions could be asked about any of these books. The first team to answer the question correctly wins the point and the team with the most points at the end wins that round. Do you think it is easy? Try knowing several books that well with the added pressure of another team trying to answer before you do!

The organizers of Battle of the Books wanted to provide an event for the book loving students in our schools and its popularity has remained high. It is just as competitive as any of our zone and county sports tournaments and the winners at the the school, zone and county level. The pride shown by winning teams is huge.

Many members of the DGH community know that Mr. Hetherington loves sports. But, did you know that Mr. Hetherington also loves Science! One of his interests in the past few years has especially been Lego Robotics.

The school has a number of Lego Robotics Kits and each year DGH sends a Robotics team to compete at a board-wide event. In preparation for the event, Mr. Hetherington has the intermediate classes working in small groups on building their own robots. Everyone completes the same initial robot as a “warm-up” and to learn the basics of building and then programming the robot. Small motors are included in the kids and students are expected to build a robot which does some kind of action or activity. These actions included travelling in a pre-determined path or scooping up items that have been placed in front of it. Really, the sky is the limit as the robots can be programmed to do many different things. In order for the robot to do these things it has to be programmed on the computer – with the program then being downloaded into the robot. For our hands-on students this type of activity is extremely engaging and perhaps may lead to a future job.

On April 13th, Mr. Hetherington will be taking a team of 4 students to compete at the board-wide competition.

The pics below show grade 8 students in the process of building their groups’ robots.